Meet Inga Taylor: Member of OfficeRnD’s Advisory Board with 20 Years of Serviced Office Experience

Like every technology company faced with the challenge of exponential growth, we know that our passion isn’t enough to help us grow and develop our product. 

Early on in our development as a company, we had the luck of meeting some amazing people with an immense depth of knowledge of our industry, who shared our vision.

They have played a major role in the multiple stages of growth we’ve gone through and will continue to do so. We formally call those people “Advisors” and we believe it’s worth it to put them in the spotlight for you.

It’s with great pleasure that we introduce you to Inga Taylor, who has been one of the main forces influencing our product development to meet the needs of Serviced Offices and Business Centers. 

Her focus on operational excellence and deep understanding of the complex system of a flexible workspace has helped us raise the bar on how our company supports all the little moving pieces that, if managed properly, come together to form an outstanding member experience.

Inga Taylor started working in the industry by joining a serviced office company in the UK back in 1999 where she was responsible for operations, and opening and setting up the new locations of the company.

“When I started in the company there were five centers and when I left they were 88, and during that time we had opened France, Germany, and Holland.”

“Back then there wasn’t really a managing software for serviced offices. We changed our CRM and accounting twice, along with over-customizing existing solutions, which took us a lot of time and effort.”

The following years for Inga included working for another serviced office company and helping them grow from 8 to 23 locations. She also worked as Head of Service Delivery for one of the existing serviced office software providers (not us).

Eventually, she founded Opstech with the aim to provide strategic advice and support to business owners and operators within the flexible workspace sector. 

Joining OfficeRnD’s Advisory board

“I met the OfficeRnD team when there were just 4 of you in 2016. I was impressed by the teams understanding of the sector and product as a new platform and wanted to contribute to its development. I am passionate about what you do and I really see it as something new, fresh and with a future.”

“When consulting Opstech clients, my approach to systems and technology is to make the process of implementation simple and intuitive, helping to avoid the pit falls and avoid mistakes. 

The user interface and the number of clicks and where things are located is really important. Everything should have a flow and that is actually why I’m a fan OfficeRnD—because it has a flow and it’s visual and it’s intuitive.”

“Another thing I like about OfficeRnD is the company culture. You feel the unity, friendship, and trust between you all, that’s really special will help you grow. The team thrives on feedback of all types and most importantly applies and  learns from it fast and maintaining a good speed of development.“

Flexible workspaces in the UK are about customer service

“The interesting thing in the UK is what’s happening with landlords and property rents.”

“Landlords are getting into the flexible business, thinking they can do it by themselves, but not all can. The majority are focused on earning higher rates per square foot, but at the same time they don’t know how to provide service—and service is the main component of flexible workspaces.”

“The market in the UK is also very saturated—every week there are more workspaces opening up. It’s a more crowded place, and doesn’t show signs of slowing down either. The focus will be more about exceptional service and customer experience is in the workspace, people are still key and giving people the right tools to work with makes the client experience better.”

How OfficeRnD is going to help operators grow over the next years

“Having precise and accurate information about how their business is performing is essential when an operator wants to scale. I think such information is going to matter more and more to run an efficient business. OfficeRnD’ real-time reporting features and the dashboard view can help a lot with that.”

“Another thing that’s really great about the system is the integrations. A software management solution is supposed to be a tool to help you run your business and everybody’s business is different and their tools need to connect to different components.”

“The integrations give you a lot of freedom and convenience because you can build connections with other tools you already use or want to use in future—whether it’s SaltoKS, Kisi, Dynamics, or whatever it might be.”

What’s next for Inga Taylor, Opstech and OfficeRnD

Inga will continue to help us develop the right product for Serviced Offices that meets their needs.

Opstech is our preferred implementation partner for the UK and BCA’s award ‘Partner of the Year’ winner for 2018. They will continue to support OfficeRnD customers in the UK and are also willing to make on-site visits (if capacity allows it) to whoever needs help in implementing and using their management systems.

Our partnership validates that having boots on the ground, whether it’s us or experts like Inga and Opstech, helps us unlock the biggest value of our software—minimizing the efforts of running a flexible business and helping workspaces improve their performance.

The Human Factor in OfficeRnD

This post was part of a series of content pieces, that will showcase who we are and why we believe in what we’re doing.

We have the honor to work with great teammates—exceptional professionals and amazing people, who truly believe in our mission of making coworking the way of working.

And we want to put our team in the spotlight and share with you our story.

Don’t miss to check out the other post of the series:

APAC Coworking Market Scales with a Great Swing: Interview with Jessica Knapp, Regional Manager at OfficeRnD

OfficeRnD Expands in the US to Better Serve Local Coworking Spaces: Michael Everts Joins the Company as Regional Manager

To be continued…